Sometimes You Don't Have To Start From Scratch - Your Weekly Report from SewingArtistry ❄️

Published: Fri, 12/17/21

Basic

December 17, 2021

Sometimes you can find a jewel and with a little touch here and there, you can make it a gem again.

Older and vintage clothing is particularly this way. Mostly clothing before Grunge which touted ill-fitting, torn, ragged, worn-out looking clothing as being fashionable. Future generations will look upon this era as, "What in the world were they thinking?" For a fashion phase that should have lasted less than a year, it has gone on and on and on.

So it's a real treat for me when I get to work on a very fine garment. What makes it really fine? The style, the cut and of course the workmanship on the inside, which means it includes nice seam allowances and usually some interesting design or technique feature that makes the dress really unique.

To be honest it's hard to tell that much from these photos, so let's lighten them up a bit:

OK - now we can see some really great detail.

I like to try and date these garments, and although most folks thought Marc Jacobs was nuts when he did his first "Grunge" show in 1992 (and he was fired for it), so most of the finer houses didn't sign on for this sort of sloppy way of making clothes - although at first all the fine techniques were used, but it was made to look sloppy, but not really be sloppy because the consumer wouldn't put up with poorly made clothing. It could look poorly made, but had to be well made. Yeah, I know the illogic of it is still amazing.

Because many of the fine houses, like Lanvin (and this is a vintage Lanvin dress), didn't do much of this Grunge sort of thing till Prada signed on to it. And Giorgio Armani was so disappointed that the fine house of Prada was going to stoop this low, that he came out publicly against it. And Armani never really signed on to the ragged/frayed edges, the ill-fitting/too-small/too-big look because he strived so hard to make sure his garments were so meticulously designed and had a great line, that he didn't see the purpose of it. It soon became known that Versace would dress the mistress while Armani would dress the wife!

Finally at the turn of the century, Alber Elbaz, a very famous designer with some great pedigree (among which he worked for one of my favorite designers, Geoffrey Beene) came to Lanvin, and I suspect this dress is of that period. The dress has some beautiful assembly techniques as well as some of the most delicious fabric I've put in my hands in years. It's not really Navy, although that's how it's listed, it's probably more purple. The dark blue has a lot of red in it, which makes it that much more interesting. The raised matelassé or pique with a design, type weave is black with a woven shiny type fiber in the black, so this gives it just the tiniest of bling. There's a lot going on in the fabric, but because it's so dark and the tones are so close together in color, it doesn't look like a lot is going on. This is what I call a very rich texture.

So my client brings the dress by and the first thing I notice is that it has a tag: "Made in France" and I'm impressed already. The second thing I notices was the Grunge tell-tale frayed edge on the neckline and the sleeves. That doesn't do anything for me anymore and actually dates the dress to early 21st c and looks old and tired now. So that needed to come off. But because the frayed trim was on the bias, there was a lot that could be done with it.

The next thing I notice is the cut of the dress. It has the most interesting dart lines that lead into pleats for a fuller skirt, perfect thing to wear to a dinner-dance.

In the darker (real light) version, it's hard to see the darts and how they work. This SCREAMS Geoffrey Beene, and this is the downright proof this is an Alber Elbaz as he worked as Beene's senior assistant in the 90s in New York. And these darts are totally decorative, but they are also highly functional. That's a dead-giveaway of a Beene look. He had the most decorative darts and fitting devices, but they didn't look like darts or fitting devices. They look like they were purely there for design alone. Beene was tricky that way - the old devil.

This is typical of what Beene would do. Those inset pieces look like they are simply design devices, but they have a lot of fitting in them. The problem is that Beene most often fit ladies who had very slim figures. But no matter cause these devices could work for many figure types. When I did this jacket I loved the collar in back but not the low collar in front, so I simply added a front collar. Additionally I needed more fit for my bust so I simply added a dart from that side piece into the front of the bodice and it fit beautifully after that.

My client doesn't like low-cut clothing, and this dress is actually cut below her bra so that her bra was showing. She wants something across her decolletage area, and I agree. This is a long-time client and I also know that she runs a little on the cold side, and having sleeves and something closer to her neck is more comfortable for her. So I found this beautiful organza with just a little shine. In addition I found a beautiful 3-d lace that was on a beautiful Chantilly lace background.

So taking the lace and cutting it apart into medallions, making sleeves and raising the neckline, still left us with a little bra still showing. Raising the shoulders made the dress hit correctly, on the bust, waist and hip. The silhouette was more "on the waist" than above the waist, and raising the waist slightly gives this silhouette a whole new look. Placing the lace around the neckline actually added a bit more decoration to the gown and finished those edges that did have the frayed bias trim. Using that trim, and then binding the neckline and the cuff hem, finished the dress and literally made it look like this was a purposeful design.

Lightening it up a little, you can see the beautiful floral lace detail as well as the dart detail. With a few alterations, the whole tenor of the dress changes and becomes immediately a fresh new look that becomes way more chic than the tired old frayed-edge look.

Basics:
Raising the waistline silhouette
Removing the frayed edges
Which then required a finish on the edges
Using the old bias frayed pieces to have a finished edge for the sleeve cuffs and neckline.

That isn't that much and for this dress it completely changes the look to a much more modern look that will last this client for another 10 years.

For the Christmas season here are a few gifts to get you started for what's coming in the New Year. You can take a look at them, and use them like you want right now, but we will really build on these resources starting the first of the year. You can also wait till the first of the year, but they are a great way to start the New Year, AND they are free right now. The first of the year, they won't be available for free anymore.

A Croquis
Sketching is wonderful and a really great way to start is with your own figure, but how do you trace your own figure? In a mirror? Well, no. You can make what the pros call a croquis (crow-key). This is an outline of your own figure that you can use to trace different looks and styles and ideas before you make them up. I love mind and it has saved me many, many fruitless hours with some pretty ideas I thought were pretty neat at the beginning. The more I sketched them out they didn't work out so well. But this is exactly what the pros do and what they hope to discover in working through all their design issues.

A Scoop Book - Pages in Order Form and Booklet Form
I love scoop shopping. When every I'm in a big city, the first thing I do is hit the exclusive, high-end boutiques and department stores and take notes like crazy. For that, I developed a "scoop book". In this book are very lightly printed mannequins that you can use to sketch your ideas on. Often a simple squiggle or mark can recall the exact look or idea that you were excited about. The other page is about written ideas that will help you recall the garment or the part of the outfit that you liked.

There are two forms of this. One is with the pages in order and the other is with the pages in "booklet" form. The booklet form needs to be printed in order and on both sides flipping on the short side of the page. If that seems too complicated, use the form with the pages in order. Either one with will for you!

Well-Edited Wardrobe Ebook and Workbook (Interactive, Print-out)
I know, I can hear it now......."NOOOOOO, not the dreaded make me clean out my closet workbook!!!!!!!" Yes, that's what this is, but it's really worth it, and from where we're going to start in January, this is not only a must but makes such a fabulous way to begin what we're going to do in January. The fun thing about getting this before January is that you have plenty of time to attack this.

The Workbook is a gem and there are two formats here. One is interactive so if you want to put this on your tablet, and work with it that way, you can fill in everything in the pdf interactive version. If you simply want to print out the workbook and fill out the pages, there is this form too. You choose which one is simplest. The E-book is an explanation of how great it is to have a well-edited closet. And there are other benefits that you can start with in January!